December 09th, 2015

My son is a master crawler now. He has also learned how to pull himself up to standing, but he is not the best at sitting back down. As you can imagine, this leads to a few tumbles and bumps to the head. Since he is crawling everywhere, he is now up close and personal with all the germs and other treasure on the floor (I do clean my floors daily, but we also have four dogs.)

I support and love germs, but since we are coming up on winter cold and flu season, I too appreciate a hand sanitizer at times.  These reasons led me to wanting a solution to ease the head bumps and an antibacterial gel for those sticky little fingers.

I am not a fan of any chemical-based hand sanitizer. If you get a chance, take a look at the ingredients on the back of the bottle. DO a little research into what it can lead too....in a quick google research the word cancer will pop up a lot.

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Here are the solutions I have found very successful.
For bumps and bruises: Boirons arnicare gel homeopathic medicine. I am so thankful for this and Have had amazing results with this product for everyone in my family. If applied immediately after a bump or strain to the body, swelling and bruising drastically lesson or do not occur at all. If you have a Trader Joe's in your neighborhood, you can get the gel there for the best price of under six dollars! I should mention the company also has a Aricare cream available. While this works great for my husband and I, it caused a reaction on my son's skin. I compared the ingredients, and the gel contains less additives then the cream. The only downside to this, is that you need several of them. One for the medicine cabinet, one for the diaper bag, and an extra when you cannot find either of those. Although I do not like chemical hand sanitizers, the companies designs for the small bottles that clip onto keychains was ingenious. So here is what I did, at Michael's I found those keychains on clearance for $.23! Problem solved! My Arnicare gel is now on my purse and on my keys!

For the hand sanitizer: a DIY recipe of all natural and simple ingredients.
1 oz. all Vera gel
5 drops drops tea tree oil or lemon if you do not like the scent of tea tree
5 drops lavender essential oil
5 drops sweet orange essential oil

This recipe is safe for transfer to baby, but is for adults use only. I do not recommend putting hand sanitizer on your little one as their fingers are often in their mouth's. Ingestion of a sensual oils is a very heated topic. To make this recipe for your young child, five years or older, only use two drops of each essential oil.
Directions
Rinse out and thoroughly clean your keychain hand sanitizer.
Add all of the essential oils to the bottle, replace the and shake vigorously for 30 seconds to mix the oils.
Top off the bottle with the aloe vera gel.